NVIDIA GeForce MX150 vs 940M, 940MX and 950M – benchmarks and gaming comparison

GeForce MX150 is NVIDIA’s latest Pascal-based mobile graphics cards. While all other GTX 10 series GPUs do not have a dedicated mobile version (they rather have a laptop edition), the MX150 is the mobile edition of the GT 1030. We already showed you gameplay footage and benchmarks of the MX150 but now it’s time to compare it to other budget mobile graphics cards like the 940M, 940MX, and 950M.

NVIDIA claims that its new mobile GPU is up to 66% faster than the 940MX and three times as power efficient (performance per watt) thanks to the new 14nm FinFET manufacturing process and the Pascal GP108 chip used. The MX150 has a much higher base core clock than both the GTX 940MX that it is compared to and even the 950M – 1468 MHz vs 1122 MHz and 914 MHz respectively.

To be as fair as possible, we are using notebook equipped with the GDDR5 versions of the 940MX and 950M. The 940M is the only card that uses DDR3 memory as it is an older model. All four of them have 2 GB of memory except the 950M which has 4 GB.

Check out our Laptop Graphics Ranking, where you can find more information about all the compared GPUs: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-graphics-ranking/

Check out all available GeForce GTX 940M laptops and their prices here:  Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)
Check out all available GeForce GTX 940MX laptops and their prices here:  Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)
Check out all available GeForce GTX 950M laptops and their prices here:  Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)
Check out all available GeForce MX150 laptops and their prices here:  Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)

Synthetic benchmarks

The MX150 and the GTX 950M have roughly the same scores. The MX150 scores a percent better but this won’t make a huge difference in real-life performance as you will see in the gaming comparison. It’s interesting to say that the MX150 lives up to the claims of NVIDIA to be up to 60+ percent more powerful than the GTX 940MX at least in synthetic benchmarks.


Gaming performance

We are going to compare the gaming performance of the GTX 90MX, GTX 950M, and MX150 in GTA IV. Why is that you may ask – well, while the MX150 is a new and more capable (as you will see) GPU, the GTX 940MX is less powerful and the GTX 950M is just released some time ago now and that’s why the GTX 940MX and GTX 950M haven’t been tested in newer more demanding titles like Far Cry Primal.

The GTX 940M is excluded from the gaming performance comparison as it’s a really low-end GPU aimed more at multimedia than gaming and it would barely run GTA IV.

GTA-V-benchmarks

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5)Full HD, Low (Check settings)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, Max (Check settings)
MX15077 fps29 fps– fps
GTX 950M79 fps32 fps– fps
GTX 940MX57 fps20 fps– fps

As you can see, the MX150 delivers about 35 to 45% higher average frame rates than the GTX 940MX. It is on par with the GTX 950M with just a couple frames lower results which are negligible. The MX150 managed to provide 17 fps on Very High graphics settings which is near the Max. Although this is a low unplayable frame rate it shows that the newer Pascal architecture of the MX150 surpasses the old Maxwell-based GTX 950M to some extent.

Though we don’t have detailed tests, we ran a few benchmarks on other games on our MX150 unit and we can conclude that games like Rise of the Tomb Raider are playable on Full HD (1920 x 1080p) resolution on low graphics settings (around 40 fps). Far Cry Primal is also playable on low settings (45 fps average), however, the resolution has to be lowered to HD (1366 x 768p).

Verdict

Overall we can say that the MX150 is a really good budget GPU. It is indeed a lot faster than an integrated GPU and it’s a huge improvement over the GTX 940MX. It is in fact on par with the GTX 950M maybe even better in some cases. The MX150 will live up to NVIDIA’s claims to enhance day to day use and provide enough power for light photo and video editing. It is even capable of gaming and we mean playing triple-A titles, of course, don’t expect too much – low graphics setting and lower than 1080p resolution for certain games are required to achieve a playable frame rate.

Check out all available GeForce GTX 940M laptops and their prices here:  Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)
Check out all available GeForce GTX 940MX laptops and their prices here:  Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)
Check out all available GeForce GTX 950M laptops and their prices here:  Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)
Check out all available GeForce MX150 laptops and their prices here:  Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)

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stev
stev
6 years ago

Great to know, thanks. I believe the TDP, and noise will also be significantly improved upon vs. the 950M +940M. this would be great for laptops!

Louie R
6 years ago

I have a 940M in my MSI laptop and I play GTA V at 30fps on low settings. It’s fine for me

yvesmangaprot@gmail.com
5 years ago

why my MX150 is slower than my friends geforce gtx 940mx? we play the same game with same settings

Aymane.B
Aymane.B
5 years ago

there are two versions of the MX150, a 25watt one, called “MX150-0” and, a 10watt “MX150-2”. In these benchmarks, they are referencing the 25watt one. note that the 10watt version is slower by 20-25% of the 25watt one.